With "The Walking Dead" only days away from its Season 4 premiere, the AMC zombie series is getting plenty of time in the spotlight. The show is the cover story of this issue of Rolling Stone, and the magazine takes a look inside the hit show.

"A lot of people think the show is bleak and depressing, but I can see where it's going in the next 10 years, and I think about it optimistically," comics creator Robert Kirkman tells Rolling Stone. "Maybe it's going to make us better people by the end of it."

For fans who wish there had been more urban settings on "The Walking Dead," it turns out that Season 1 almost showed the fall of Atlanta. "It was going to be like 'Black Hawk Down,' following an Army Ranger unit as the city succumbs to the zombie plague," production designer Gregory Melton says. "That was thrown out due to cost."

Meanwhile, Norman Reedus is featured in the October issue of GQ. In it, he discusses the evolution of his character Daryl and how fans grew to adore him.

"I wanted to play it like I was sort of embarrassed of who I was," Reedus explains. Of fans of the comic who didn't like Daryl at first, he says, "Call them nerds, whatever, man. I f***ing love nerds."